unclevlad

Warning. The above video will melt your brain. It's too late for me. You can save yourselves tho.......

Story broke last week, IIRC, that a member of the British Museum staff had been fired on suspicion of looting items from the museum's collections. Well, word is now, there were warning signs going back a ways...and nothing was done. You can imagine how well THAT went over. The director of the Museum has now resigned, effective immediately, accepting final responsibility lay with him, and he failed.

My spice dealer just announced the return of pumpkin spice. I should write them...they dropped cake spice some years back. Ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg IIRC, probably some others. That's the one I really miss. I do almond flour based pancakes from time to time; cake spice was a great add. Altho recently I've been playing around with orange essential oil...yummm...and got some baking emulsions recently. Raspberry works nice...especially since I top them with zapped, crushed frozen berries anyway. (Black, rasp, blue mix.)

It takes 4 No votes to torpedo it. Interesting article. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-football/news/acc-expansion-stanford-cal-smu-really-would-add-nothing/tjt4vceowjocnzdqy66kzpqq 3500 for basketball home games? Colorado was lousy when I was there, and drew 2-3 times that... And Cal only had 2200? We might've beaten that when the games were in the Fieldhouse, freshman year. And THAT was a glorified HS gym...literally. OLD court, terrible lighting, literally just bleachers on each side of the court. Kinda fun to watch a game there, you were right on the court...

Will it never end??? Story is that the ACC is back to considering expansion. Cal, Stanford, AND SMU. Vote may happen by the weekend.

That resounding crash you heard was not, for a change, the sound of your NCAA brackets after your overall winner lost in the round of 32. No, it's the sound of Trey Lance falling to QB 3 and going on the trade block...where he's got next to no value. Report is early day 3...that's 4th round, IIRC. Between the contract and non-production, and the assets they had to trade, this ranks decently close to the Ryan Leaf deal, and will very likely end up on "worst trades ever" lists reasonably soon. There's a HARSH!!! review of Kyle Shanahan's personnel management here: https://www.si.com/nfl/49ers/news/the-49ers-emperor-has-no-clothes

Excellent segue there, Cygnia!

From WaPo...stunned me at first but... Stephen Strasburg is going to retire. As I say, whoa...right? Except I think of him as a lot younger than he is, because, you know, we just haven't heard much about him...so he hasn't been around that long. Well, not on an active roster. GREAT 2019...but a grand total of 30 innings since. He had thoracic outlet surgery that removed a couple ribs...never recovered. The info on why is noting a rare medical condition that may have contributed to the problem. It's stunning to read that he was drafted in 2009! 247 career starts. Some of it is geographic. His best years were 2012, then 14-19. IIRC, there were fewer games on MLB Network, Fox/FS1, and TBS. Maybe a couple more a week on ESPN. The Nats were on MASN; I think I got MASN for a while, but the RSNs really shrank their distribution areas at some point in there. Ohhh...Nats make me sweat but hold on to beat the Yankees. Yippee kiyay! And...oh my. I was ANNOYED earlier because the Red Sox-Astros game was blacked out. HATE that. Oh well. Red Sox 17-1. 11 runs after 3 innings. No loss missing that, then. NOTE: Bob Costas is on MLB Tonight, talking about Strasburg. He's saying nerve damage. Tingling in the hand. Said, he can't trust picking up his daughter...can't trust his hand. So rather serious impediment.

Just FYI, the languages section is several THOUSAND lines long. In Main6E, it starts at line 714, and ends at line 10555. Note that there are some huge swathes of languages that aren't what I'd call core. HD has the complete, expanded list, it's over 600 languages, IIRC. There's definitely sections where the micro-detail is probably not necessary. If you're making your own languages template anyway...it can be worth trimming. The sheer length always irritates me, given that the HD control doesn't support matching as you type a string in, or even jump to a current entry (when there is one) when editing.

I'd forgotten that scene. On that level, tho, the Matrix was all metaphor. The comics very rarely delve into metaphor.

PLEASE DON'T !!! Plotlines like that make me just flee. Infinity War and BOTH finger snaps were bad enough. At least for me, it throws suspension of disbelief totally out the window. It frequently leads to ridiculous deus ex machina "resolutions." What's the point of anything that goes on, in that case?

This point alone is all that's needed to show the state of the "law and order" party.

I wanted to keep dinner inside. Oh, and US officials now believe an explosion brought down the aircraft in Russia with Prigozhin reportedly aboard. What caused the explosion...we probably won't know, there's plenty of ways to do it. And Russia isn't going to exactly go out of its way to determine the cause. The known humanitarian, Mr. V. Putin, had this to say: Yeah, I think we can all name one of em..............

Now, see, that's where a failing has been, from what I've heard. They've drafted "MLB ready" for quite a while. It hasn't worked. They get middle of the pack ballplayers. Their farm system might have "MLB ready"...but they're also consistently ranked low. The Angels' approach has been to try for the quick fix. It's failed miserably. Occasional rest won't do enough to alleviate what's causing ligament tears, most likely. As for Trout...it's not just this injury. Are they overly deferring to him...out of desperation? Maybe. But it's ongoing. He's missed 40 or more games 5 times in the last 7 years. I also don't mean just the free agents. This team will not win with Trout and Ohtani, because neither can be trusted to play enough moving forward. I question, admittedly from afar, whether the team's mentality is that one of them will bail them out. It doesn't work that way. I look at the Reds...to a point, the D'backs. The Rays. The Orioles. Scrappy. Hungry. The Angels? No. 5th most strikeouts. 4th fewest stolen bases. 3rd in home runs, but 10th in RBI. Passive and ineffective. EDIT: FanGraphs has now given the Angels no chance to make the playoffs. 0.0%. They need to make a miracle run (26-8 to get to 87 wins), AND have 2 of the 4 teams (Royals, Rangers, Blue Jays, Mariners) play under .500, as they're on pace for 90. Oh...and the A's are a Seattle win or A's loss away from mathematical elimination. A's have 91 losses. 4 teams have 72 wins already, and someone will come out of the Central. That's 5. Seattle has 71 wins.

3rd installments typically have a fanbase developed. Lots of times, the first installments don't do as well. I'd also say it's not either-or. Both can be true. DCU's problem is less about casting...yeah, OK, Ezra Miller I'll grant...but more about picking terrible material to adapt. Either characters few know, or taking the UNLIKED versions of the known characters. But I do think genre fatigue is also prevalent.

And when the BODY roll is even 16-18, which is 25% of the time, a 5 stun die is dropping 29, 33, or 37 STUN. And consider when you get a 6. 45, 50, or 55 STUN gets through. Now we're talking stunned AND KO'd...even potentially with just 1 strike. Take a bit of STUN here and there, THEN get hit? Yeah, it's lights out. 6E realized the stun multiplier was very badly broken. Because it's also more of a risk of doing BODY. Against 4d6 killing, minimum rDEF is 12, I'd say; you're still taking BODY on average. That's bad; the system doesn't want to be lethal. 3rd Ed D&D really started to recognize the problem. Single rolls gave TOO MUCH variation. Save or die, or the equivalent. Yeah, it went back earlier, with stuff like poison, but it became glaring in 3E. Pretty heavily discussed on the boards. Critical hits could also have the issue. With 5E killing attacks, mostly, it's the stun mult. 5 or 6 did too much, too often; 1 or 2 meant no STUN got through, regardless.

Which means it's #2. This could easily mean the end of the Ohtani Experiment. No, you *can't* pitch and hit full time, not as a starter. It also creates serious uncertainty about what his next contract could look like. And Trout going RIGHT back...is it just me, or do y'all also start questioning the competence of the Angels' training and medical staffs? This team needs to be blown up. The organization's approach has failed.

It never ends for the Angels. Ohtani only throws 26 pitches before getting pulled with arm soreness. Of course, he hits #44 first.... It was pointed out that his workload's been high, due to the WBC. He wasn't pitching at spring training levels. Yeah, he's been *great* as a pitcher this year...but the question of whether he can sustain doing both is still up in the air. OR, whichever club he plays with next year, will have to do some pretty serious load management. And after playing just 1 game, Trout misses BOTH ends of the double header today; the Monday game was postponed with all the rain/flooding to today, to give everyone a solid couple of days to do cleanup.

Key point from the opening paragraph.... Yeah, this is what happens when the attorney gives advice in his client's interest...rather than the interest of who's paying the tab.... Secondary: will the prior attorney be up on ethics charges, and even possible criminal charges for suborning perjury? It's definitely grounds for disbarment.

High attack, low defense is called a glass cannon. One hit, dropped! But how often can/should the GM target him to be dropped? Actually, quite a bit! If he's much more effective, then NOT targeting him is stupid. Auto rifles doing AP killing? Recognize these are murderous. Nothing less. Unless you're talking SERIOUSLY high powered. If I have to worry about it? It'll sharply re-shape my defenses. 3d6 killing? I'd better have 11-12 resistant, if I don't wanna get TOO mauled. AP? I'd better have MOST of that *hardened*. Make it autofire, and ok, 2 hits might not be too likely...but it'll happen often enough. Now I gotta face a bad damage roll *twice*. Killing attacks are a classic example why your concept breaks down. Killing attacks are MASSIVELY variable. Sure, much of the time...they're useless. They do nothing, assuming appropriate rDEF. But that's not the risk, from the PCs' perspective. They have to be concerned with the HIGH damage rolls. 8d6 K isn't a 24 DC attack, from a risk mitigation perspective. Ask yourself, what would you rather face? --8d6 killing in 5E (with the ugly d6-1 stun mult) --24d6 normal --30d6 normal It's LESS bad in 6E. The stun mult *had* to be reduced, IMO. But still...8d6 killing requires at least mid-20s rDEF; you need 28 to bounce the average BODY. 34+ will happen about 13%. But there's also a recognition...even in VERY HIGH powered supers, 24 DC attacks are huge. 24 DCs is 120 active...if it's full END, more if it's got Reduced END...which is the upper limit for Very High Powered supers (6E1 35). 24 DCs normal does 84 STUN...so what kinda defenses are needed?

Nah, just took that long to trace you. We're getting the effect of Harold now. Nothing nearly as bad, altho flash flood warnings are out.

It varied. Levels 1-5, thief was about 1/2. 6-9? Wizard for some bizarre reason made these *fast*. The jump was at 10, and at that point you needed a ton of XP. http://www.sisterworlds.com/olde/2e/xp.htm But, also remember that the thief class in 1st and 2nd Ed was pretty bad. Poor hit points, poor attacks, thieving skills took a LONG time, IIRC, to be good enough. And traps were frequently Save or Die. (And often far, far, far too common. It says a lot, IMO, that there was a Dragon (?) article titled Do YOU Trap Your Bedroom Door? Because traps tended to be grossly overused.) No. The limitation was level caps, which were often VERY!!! low. Like, an elven fighter could never be higher than 7th level. The highest levels also required HIGH!!! stats...like, for fighters, not just 18 STR but 18/75...for half elf fighters...? Been forever, so this might not be right. If you're curious, then look online for the manuals from the SSI AD&D games, like Pools of Darkness. That was #3 in the series, so highest level characters and that should show the limitations. They were pretty bad. In 3E, there was the notion of a racial level adjustment for some of the powerful races. You might have 1 class level, but if you're a drow? You were treated as 3rd or 4th level in terms of power. It was a terrible notion; it almost never balanced out.

Back then, tho, low level character deaths didn't mean anything. Roll up a new one! Takes 5 minutes. Characters had about as much depth as the paper they were written on. Early D&D had almost no sense of balance. It depends. Does the GM recognize scaling issues/problems? 2 examples, both from Living City...which got to be murderous almost out of necessity. I'd played the scenario; there was a seriously nasty fight that our pretty balanced party had a hard time with. (LC fights were scaled by total party levels...and woe betide the party that *just* cleared a threshold.) Then I happened to watch a session...same scenario. TERRIBLE party construction. 4 total newbie characters...a couple, IIRC, were multiclass demihumans, which was a bad idea in LC due to the impact on tiering (and VERY slow advancement). 1 player had a pretty high level character...but it was a thief. The GM added up total levels, never even thinking about it. When they hit the fight my group had a hard time with? 2 or 3 of em dropped in the first or second round...THEN the GM was worried it'd be a TPK. Little late. It was a very bad session. Different con, different GM. I ran my 6th level fighter; most of the rest of the party was, again, super low level. GM took me aside and flat out said, my guy was gonna catch the brunt of the fighting. I said, of course. AFAIK, no one else caught on. Oh, yeah...and slavish attention to rolls. <sigh> Literally the start of the 3E era...so everyone was converting their characters, when no one really got the details. One guy, IIRC, a triple-class elf...which he converted to something like a fighter 2, wizard 2, thief 2. Translation? USELESS compared to a 6th level *anything*. So we start the scenario, and we're chatting player to player...new system and whatnot...the scenario dictates an ambush if the PCs weren't paying much attention. We weren't, for various reasons (some of it organizational, too)...and the ambush included crossbowmen. DM rolled 3 crits before anyone could react. Yeah, you can guess, TPK. LOTS of things done wrong. Organizational problems led to VERY late start. Changing systems and no one understood them. Poor choices by the GM. Everyone agreed to write off the whole thing...we didn't even fill out sheets.

Reported just now. The head of the Wagner military group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is being listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed. Uh. Huh. You don't tug on Superman's cape................

Yeah, it meant higher primary stats gave you higher secondary ones. PD was STR/5; ED was CON/5 SPD was 1 + DEX/10 REC was STR/5 + CON/5 END was CON*2 STUN was BODY + STR/2 + CON/2 OCV and DCV were DEX/3 ... this is the big one, obviously. ECV was EGO/3, so you might see a little buy-up there to be...well a little less of a sitting duck. The rounding rules were in effect, too, which mostly applied to CON and DEX. STR, you'd typically buy full dice of damage. 23 DEX hits both the CV and DEX roll rounding points, which made it extremely efficient. Given the central role of CV, you'd still see 26 sometimes. Or the "+1" numbers, 18 and 29. 17 is CV, 18 is DEX roll. 28 is DEX roll, 29 is CV. To make things worse in several ways...in 5E, REC, END, and STUN were *expensive* to buy up from the figured values. In 6E, REC is 1, END is 1 point for 5 END, and STUN is 1 point for 2 STUN. In 5E, REC is 2, END is 1 point for 2 END, and STUN is 1. Flip side, note that DEX was 3 points per, and CON, EGO, and BODY were 2 points. So, SOME of the increase from figured characteristics was factored into the price. The cost of REC, in particular, gets to be painful for a higher SPD character.